Profiting From Social Networking

This is the second in a series of articles we will be publishing relaying thoughts and ideas from the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago, which occurred June 5th through June 7th. Peter Kosciewicz, Director of E-Commerce for the Eastwood Company, and Chris Saito, Senior Director, Shopping Products for Yahoo! Shopping, delivered a presentation entitled “Social Networking: The Peer Pursuasion Marketing Tool.”

According to Kosciewicz, the Web today has grown into an “architecture of participation” that facilitates social networking through devices such as blogs, wikis, RSS, podcasts, and more. Forrester Research has published studies that show that traditional marketing is continuing to lose credibility. For example, in 2002, 78% of respondents in a survey said that ads are a good way to learn about a new product. In 2004, that number had dropped to 46%. In 2002, 14% of respondents agrees that companies generally tell the trust. As pathetic as 14% is, in 2004, it had declined even further – down to 7%. Social networking as a means of marketing overcomes this lack of consumer trust because it relies on the word of the consumer rather than the word of the producer. Research from Datamonitor reported that 85% of repondents in a survey indicated that word-of-mouth from friends, family, or colleagues is more trustworthy than corporate-generated content.

So how do you take advantage of social networking to sell more product? Simple – you open yourself up. You plant the seeds of a community to grow up around your site by using devices such as blogs, customer reviews, and forums to give a voice to your customers or prospective customers. The caveat is that you must be high quality. You must have high quality service and a high quality product. If not, avoid this marketing method.

Kosciewicz outlined four important rules for using social networking on your web site:

1. Guide but don’t control.
2. Never censor.
3. Don’t be afraid of the negative.
4. Don’t be paranoid.

If you open up a forum on your site but then restrict what people are allowed to say, such as removing posts that are negative toward your company or that mention your competitors, then you will do more damage than good to your reputation. Use negativity as a way to improve your business. If people are negative, look at that as feedback and act on it. Make changes, and then let your community know about it. Don’t worry about your community talking about your competition. Your attitude has to be that you are the best, so why worry about it?

As a community develops around your web site, certain members will establish themselves as more influential than others. They will be more outspoken, and will be the ones who often respond to others. Cultivate these members, because they can be powerful allies. Once you have identified the more influential members of your community, contact them regularly, give them free product, become their friend. Feed your influencers information, and they will distribute it for you. But do not make it appear that you are only interested in them because they can help you sell stuff. You need to be genuine.

Measuring the impact of social networking is difficult. Unlike other forms of marketing, there is no direct connect between social networking activity and sells. What you will want to do is track traffic to pages such as customer reviews, referral links, etc.

Social networking can be a powerful marketing tool, if you have a high quality product and are not afraid of an open dialogue with your customers.

10 Social Networking Sites

The great thing about social networking is that it is changing how people communicate with friends, family, businesses and everyone else online, and it is even revolutionizing how people make money online as well. You can target new friends, old friends, family members and even new customers on the top ten best social networking sites.

You can also develop relationships and introduce people to what you have to offer. If you have never looked into social networking then it is time that you did. If you do not know where to start when it comes to social networking, you can look no further. Here are the top ten best social networking sites and what they can offer you.

1 – MySpace – This is the biggest general social networking site, and is essential if you want to meet people and facilitate conversations online. There are millions of people using MySpace, are you one of them?

2 – Facebook – This is another general social networking site that is similar in nature to MySpace. What it offers is unique in many ways, making it necessary to be a member of both for best results.

3 – YouTube – YouTube is a social networking website that allows you to build a channel of self-uploaded videos that you can share with others. This is a great way to build relationships through viral video marketing.

4 – LinkedIn – This is a website that allows you to network with professionals in your industry and others. If you want to get to know people with similar business interests, this is the way to do it.

5 – Twitter – Twitter capitalizes on micro-blogging, allowing you to follow what your friends are doing and share micro-updates with the people who want to know what you are up to as well.

6 – Classmates – Classmates is a social networking website that connects you with friends from your past, allowing you to keep in touch with old schoolmates in order to rekindle friendships.

7 – Xanga – Xanga is a blogging community that allows you to share blogs, photos, videos and a lot more so that you can network with people that have similar interests from all over the world.

8 – Squidoo – Squidoo is becoming popular really fast, allowing people to create their own personal websites called lenses about any topic under the sun.

9 – MSN Groups – MSN Groups is a division of MSN that allows you to network with other people in a variety of different and unique ways to facilitate community and conversation.

10 – AOL Hometown – AOL Hometown is similar to MSN groups, though produced by AOL instead. It is a community based division of AOL that allows you to facilitate communication with people from all over the world.

As you well know there are many other social networking sites out there. By understanding the terms of service for each of the above and other adult social networking sites you can become known around the globe. Not just from a social standpoint but also from an internet marketing and business standpoint. Now it’s up to you to leverage your business and social life using the best social networking sites.

Social Media Etiquette

Social media sites understand they are going to be used as a marketing tool. They are designed to accommodate marketing. Some users may bemoan the notion that a social media site has to be subjected to blatant marketing tactics and I do admit they can be annoying, yet it is this format that the world’s twenty-somethings are gravitating to.

This is a marketplace of ideas, random thoughts and fun links in an environment that is in so many ways ‘connected’ in a style that is often defined as web 2.0 – the next generation of media sites.

If you spend any amount of time on a site like MySpace, FaceBook, Digg or other similar social media sites you begin to see how creative businesses have found a way to carve out a piece of the marketing pie. There are millions of ideas, products and services to promote and you can find them all on social media networks.

In some ways what has just been described may be thought of as more like a community garage sale or flea market, but site members can be choosey about why they allow to communicate with them.

What this means is that in most cases site members can block individuals from commenting on their website. Some sites even allow you to ban certain individuals from visiting your site while others allow you to develop your presence as a private ‘by-invitation-only’ page.

If someone visits your site and is very blatant about marketing their site without any real indication they are interested in the page owner it may make sense to remove them from a list of friends. If they return with more blatant advertising they can be banned from visiting the page in the future.

There are some individuals who have no problem allowing others to post blatant marketing material on their pages while others view the practice as a relative of spamming.

In essence you can configure most social media sites to react to others the way you want them to. In many cases you can remove friends at will and you can invite friends at will.

You should not be surprised when members who are blatantly marketing their products ask you to add them to your list of contacts. Remember, you do not have to accept their request.

If you are a business owner looking to use social media to connect with an organic audience just remember you are being watched so make sure you contribute to the pages you visit and allow others to see you as a friend – not the cyber equivalent of a telemarketer.

Profiting With Social Networking Sites

The first step to getting the most out of social network websites is to understand what they are and what they can do for you. Social network websites are designed to facilitate communities between like minded people. Some of the more popular social networking websites are Facebook and MySpace.

These social networking websites are general networking websites that are designed to facilitate the communication between people all over the world through chat mediums, messaging mediums, communities and networking, commenting, photo sharing and more. This is not where the social network website concept ends, however, as there are social network websites for every niche and interest under the sun, including social network websites for dating, business networking, investing, sharing media and news, niche interests, music, art, students and so much more.

Everyone can benefit from community social websites if they enjoy communicating with other people. Businesses can benefit from social networking by reaching out to their customers through their profiles. Individuals can benefit from social networking by meeting new people, making new friends, and developing new interests and activities by gaining exposure to a completely new world.

MySpace, Facebook and other general social networks offer exposure to videos, photos, music, blogging, commenting, groups and networks and other forms of media sharing and communication. Niche websites like Ravelry, which is a community site for knitters or Deviant Art, which is an art based social website are designed to gather people with similar interests, aspirations or goals so that they can share their creations, ideas and other communication with one another.

Social network websites are opening up new opportunities for meeting and communicating with people all over the world. Most social network websites are worldwide sites, meaning that users can join from all over the world to communicate with people that have similar interests. These community sites also provide an excellent avenue for people to reconnect with individuals from their past, such as by searching for the names of old classmates or friends from extra curricular activities and viewing their profiles in order to re establish contact.

Social network websites are exactly what the name would have you assume: They are websites that encourage networking on a social basis, though business networking is also popular through websites like these. There are hundreds of social networking websites online, including social network websites that cater to specific niches and interests, specific age groups, regions, languages, religion and many other characteristics.

It seems as if everyday new community networking sites are springing up all over the internet for a multitude of different purposes. There are social network websites for book lovers, artists, scientists, doctors, gossip hounds, people that are interested in sharing news and media, people that are interested in sharing videos, people who live in a specific country, students attending a specific school, and so many more. While some social network websites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and LiveJournal are more well known than others, the possibility when it comes to social networking is virtually limitless.

Social Media Tips

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of internet marketing, which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks like You Tube, My Space, and Face book, social web application like dig, delicious, reddit, Wiki. The goal of each SMM program varies from business to business, but mainly involves building of brand awareness, increasing visibility and through this, sells a product or service.

Social Media Marketing is becoming an essential marketing tool for connecting with customers and optimizing online presence. Social Media describes the tools and platforms, people use to publish, converse and share content online. Video, pod cast, blogs, discussion boards and social networking sites are all tools, online businessmen can use to build relationship with their customers and keep them on websites longer. Social media provides more opportunities for organizations to present optimized content that can be indexed by search engines and ultimately improves site rating.

To implement some of the social media elements, it is first important to evaluate your customers to create an effective strategy. If your consumers are professionals who commute, then pod cast can be downloaded and can be very effective.

Posting video content on YouTube is a unique opportunity to improve your position in Google’s universal search results. WithYouTube, customers can visit the site, view your video and easily post to their own blogs, social networking profiles or websites. YouTube is a great way to reach a broader viewer and generate buzz around new products, especially if your product has a visual appeal.

Building healthy relationship with the customer, that last is an on-going process for a businessperson. Social media takes this a step further by making that relationship personal through blogs. It tells about you, not only about your product or service.

A blog, which includes video, pictures and text, can build interest and loyalty among customers and a new way to search engine optimization. Create a page dedicated to community with website visitors and this will be interactive.

Social media encourages social visits to your site. Keep adding content to encourage customers to return regularly. With the advent of social media, consumers have become contributors, contributing to brand messaging. SMM is related to other online tactics such as SEO, SMO. It has a more active planned role in directing, influencing and suggesting the community members.